


Catching Up

by AceyEnn, FishPrincess, sparklezpotatoes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Red Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceyEnn/pseuds/AceyEnn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishPrincess/pseuds/FishPrincess, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklezpotatoes/pseuds/sparklezpotatoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While wandering the dream bubbles, Aradia and Sollux run straight into their most defining memories. When they choose to confront their past, they each gain a new perspective on the events that transpired: the perspective of the other. Collab Round Entry for Team 2p00ky. Written by FishPrincess, Chapter 4 written by AceyEnn. Art by AceyEnn, sparklezpotatoes, and Dreamwidth user abstractflow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your name is Sollux Captor

  


  
Your name is Sollux Captor, and you have absolutely no fucking idea where you are.  
  
This is no different than the usual. Blindness may be a recent affliction, but if it means you don’t have to stare at a bunch of copies of your asshole friends every day as they make embarrassments of themselves, then it isn’t _that_ bad. It still manages to suck when you keep tripping over moronically placed, and freakishly useless bubble fragments. The Horrorterrors, despite being gods in their own right, have a sick fetish for making the dream bubbles as inconsistent as possible. As blind as you are, you are nowhere near as talented as TZ when it comes to depending fully on your other four senses, so it’s a damn good thing that you have a guide.  
  
You happen to have the best guide in all of paradox space, but maybe you are a bit biased.  
  
Standing next to you with her arm looped around the crook of your elbow is Aradia Megido, death fangirl extraordinaire and your best friend since wigglerhood. It’s been a long time coming, but you and she are finally the way you were always meant to be. So much time has been spent apart from each other - so many conversations lost due to death’s violent sting. But she has been resurrected, and you have been pushed and shoved in and out of life and death. You are the living among the dead, and she tells you that she feels so very much alive, and you can honestly say that you feel the same way.  
  
Even when you could see, you were so lost without her.  
  
You break the silence as you keep a slow pace alongside her. There is never a need for her to rush, and she doesn’t. Despite the fact that she has wings and a beat to her pusher, she never complains about having to slow down. Your pace is her pace, she says, and you can’t help but feel like you always drag her down. She tells you that it’s fine, that the past is the past and she holds nothing against you. The guilt does not listen to her logic, and you glue your sins against her to your chest.  
  
She breaks the silence as you both come to a complete stop, and you nearly trip over your own two feet. As startled as you are, she would never let you fall. That doesn’t mean it still doesn’t send you into a jolting panic whenever you start to fall, but at least life with Aradia is somewhat exciting.  
  
“You OK, there?” she asks as your muscles relax.  
  
“Besides my face almost eating the dirt, sure, AA, I’m fine.”  
  
She giggles, and you can’t help but smile at the sound of it. There is something so familiar about the bubble that you’re in, but you can’t seem to place what about it is so recognizable. When she stops laughing, an overwhelming darkness clouds your brain, and you feel her arm stiffen. You feel sick, and you no longer hear her breathe.

“AA?” you say, and you can feel her fingers tremble as she shifts her arm to hold your hand. You can tell she’s nervous, scared: feelings you haven’t sensed from her in what feels like sweeps. Sometimes, with her constantly perky behavior, you forget that being alive means that she will experience every emotion that comes with life.  
  
And for once, you feel like you are both on the same page.  
  
You can feel the urgency in her grip, and although you hate the fear that overcomes you, part of you wants to bolt. But you can’t; she needs you, and it’s a realization strong enough to keep you grounded. You have needed her for so long, but your existence has never felt as wanted as it is right now.  
  
“Sollux,” she says, her voice slow with each syllable of your name, and you know exactly what this is. Your mind begins to envision the scene around you. Aradia’s hive in the darkness, the lights that illuminate crooked windows from indoors. Your view as you see her running outside with an excited smile on her face--  
  
And you start to pull away from her hand, turning the other direction entirely as you start walking without her.  
  
“Wait!”  
  
You don’t want to wait. Waiting is the last thing you want to do. You can’t see, but you can hear, and that’s enough. Your mind works twice as fast to fill in the blanks that the sounds around you stimulate. This is a scene that has been all too clear for all too long, on repeat in your mind and accentuated by the doomed voices that haunted your pan long ago.  
  
“No,” you say in complete protest, still walking forward, but your foot snags on a rock and you come tumbling down, your face in the grass. “I already did this once, and I can’t believe I’m saying this right now, but fucking hell, AA, I couldn’t care less about duality right now.”  
  
You hear her weight shift as she drops down beside you, and you can feel her gaze as she sits down. There is a pregnant silence between the two of you, and you tell yourself that you aren’t moving. No matter what she says, you are staying right here.  
  
You hear a soft sigh escape her lips.  
  
“This is hard for me, too, but there is so much that we haven’t seen.”  
  
“I don’t want to see any more, that’s the whole point! I’m blind, I’m not even supposed to see anything. Staying here would be, I don’t know, the worst idea, and I’m not about to writhe around for the enjoyment of some sick as fuck, voidy seabeasts in the sky.”  
  
You spend some time grumbling to yourself, but she doesn’t respond, and you want her to respond. You want her to get you the hell out of here, but something tells you that isn’t going to happen. Without her, you are fairly helpless. The chances that you will run into someone that will help you, much less someone that you want to help you, are slim. There are only a select few people you actually trust, and alternates are sketchy territory. Aradia is the one person that actually seems to understand. Either that, or she is excellent at faking the ability to understand.  
  
“We have to face the past,” she says, and for a moment you feel your chest freeze up because you know she’s able to convince you to stay. “It’s time.”  
  
“You did not just make a fucking time pun. Do you realize how inopportune this moment is, AA? Did it strike you that maybe this is the wrong situation to spout off jokes for no good reason whatsoever?”  
  
You hear her giggle and she reaches out to try and help you up. You reluctantly make it easy for her, since she has brought you this far.  
  
“Could you shut up for a second, maybe? We’ve been avoiding talking about it ever since any of this happened. There are things I need to tell you. I need you to see.”  
  
“See what? Why can’t you tell me?”  
  
“Because I need you to _see_.”  
  
And just like that, the image in your mind is front and center in your vision.


	2. Your name is Aradia Megido

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you know better than to trust Vriska Serket.

You have gone the farthest you will go in avenging your dear friend and FLARPing partner. Summoning the spirits of the dead should be enough to make her rethink her ways. At this point, you consider her to be a person of many correctable yet excruciatingly difficult flaws. In your eyes, she is capable of learning. If she is punished, then she can repent. It is too late to save Tavros from paralysis, but you have already called upon the spirits of the dead to haunt Vriska into feeling remorse for her actions against your dear friend.

You are protective to a fault, and letting go of Vriska’s transgressions is unthinkable. Your mind never quiets, and the voices only amplify your desire to teach her a lesson. It is difficult to distinguish what is you and what is them, but you rely on the overwhelming instincts that exist in the pit of your stomach to guide you where you need to go.

She messages you and tries to make up, but you see through her façade. She cannot control your mind, and you are much too suspicious to believe anything that she says.

But then she mentions Sollux. He has made the trip all the way out to your hive from his place in the city, and you are supposed to look out your window to see him. On the off chance he is actually there, you look, and you see nothing. She tells you to go outside, and a thought strikes you.

What if she has learned her lesson after all? What if this moment of possibly pseudo-kindness is the first step to her own redemption? You figure it can’t be that much of a long shot, and you feel a sense of pride at your work. All it took for Vriska to turn her life around was a little taste of her own medicine.

An idea passes your mind that you might be stupid for trusting her, but nothing could go wrong with Sollux here to see you. After sweeps of consistent friendship, there has been ever-present, obvious red chemistry between the two of you. Although it’s nothing official just yet, it’s difficult to ignore.

You leave the computer, your pusher beating in your chest as you step around your lusus to make the trek down the stairs and through your front door. It’s so quiet that you can hear the light wind rustle the tall grass around you, and you almost turn back around when you notice Sollux isn’t here. Of course you should never trust Vriska; obviously she is using this as some sort of trick to retaliate against you. It takes more to humiliate you than a normal troll, however, and you manage to not feel embarrassed. If anything, you are tired of her lies.

You see a shape flying in the distance and approaching your hive at a quick pace. Squinting into the distance, it would be impossible to not recognize him. Sollux, your best friend, your potential matesprit, has made the trek from the city to see you. You smile as you watch him approach, feeling satisfied. The voices in your head increase in volume, shouting over each other so that you can’t hear what any of them are saying. The urgency in their tone increases as you notice the yellow residue of mind honey on Sollux’s mouth, his glasses off and in his hands. The gaze in which he looks at you is frighteningly unfamiliar, and you know this is her work.

“Sollux?” you say, your voice shaking as your smile fades into a panicked frown. For the first time, you can’t hear yourself over the voices of the damned.

While your pusher freezes in your chest, you swear you see his eyebrows soften in fear, but it is so incredibly subtle that you aren’t sure if it’s what you see or what you want to see.

You have never seen anything so bright.

There is only a millisecond of pain as your body incinerates due to a mixture of intense heat and electricity, a flash of white into an impending darkness. It is only seconds before you feel light as a feather, the pull of your spirit toward the material realm keeping your soul in the direct vicinity. It feels unnatural, it feels wrong, but Sollux is with you. He stands, mouth agape, like he doesn’t see you at all.

You watch as the breath catches in his throat and yellow tears spill out of his eyes. You turn to see what he’s looking at, suddenly you’re looking at a large hole where your hive used to be. All of your excavation sites are ruined, blending in with the rest of the dirt. Nothing is left of your home, and your pusher stings when you think of your lusus, trapped inside.

Anger fills the core of your being as you think of Vriska, and what she has done to you. You don’t have much time to hate her, given that you begin to hear the sounds of uncontrollable sobbing. Your gaze flicks over to Sollux, his knees nestled in the grass, his body crumpled within himself. With his face in his palms, his shoulders shake uncontrollably.

“Sollux?” you say again, but this time you can hear yourself. He doesn’t move from where he’s at.

“I’m so sorry, I--“ His breathing is uneven. “I’m so fucking useless, I’m so sorry.”

You go over to him in a way that reminds you more of gliding than anything else, with your limbs retaining some kind of intangible feeling.

“I’m right here,” you tell him with a sense of confidence, your hand touching his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, it’s--”

He interrupts you as you speak. “I’m so sorry, AA.”

You inhale, although it no longer feels necessary. “Sollux, listen to me, it’s Vriska--”

“I’m such a fuck-up, you didn’t deserve this.”

You feel yourself start to grow frustrated. You just want him to listen to you, just for a moment, just long enough for you to tell him the truth. Of course he didn’t do this. It was her. It was all her.

“Sollux, look at me--”

“I can’t do this, I can’t fucking do this.”

“Sollux!”

You try to pull his hands away from his face, but it’s to no avail. Your hands can’t grip onto his any longer, and you feel a strong sense of fear that digs its claws into your peace of mind. Something is wrong. You know you are no longer a part of the living; that has been taken from you.

Your voice reaches a volume reminiscent of how frantic you are as you scream his name, over and over and over and over. He never reacts; he only cries, and there is absolutely nothing you can do.

Vriska Serket has taken everything from you, and in a state of complete desperation, you cry out as loud as you can possibly manage so that you can hear your voice reverberate in the echo.

But you don’t even get that satisfaction.

What you get is a cold, dead and invisible body, cursed to watch the boy you love loathe himself over a crime he did not commit. With one last exasperated scream, you break. It’s as if you can feel your spirit snap in half until you are consumed by the crumbling pieces.

And you feel nothing at all.

-

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you want to die.

When she releases your mind, nothing within you is holding you up anymore, and you crash to the ground so hard that it sends a jolting pain through your knees. The physical ache is nothing compared to the overwhelming, all-consuming dread that devours every clear thought in your mind.

Your pusher speeds up to an unnatural pace, your body wracked with sobs that you cannot contain. No one is here; you have destroyed all signs of any kind of life in the immediate vicinity. Her hive is gone, completely incinerated into ashes. In its place is a giant hole that overtakes all of her carefully constructed excavation sites, all of which she spent sweeps on perfecting. They were supposed to be ongoing projects until this very moment when you took away it all.

All you can think of within the shouting voices in your head is how you should have had more control. It doesn’t matter that she weakened you by making you eat mind honey, it doesn’t matter that there was absolutely nothing you could have done. You still hold yourself responsible, and the weight of it is crushing you in a way that is impossible to bear.

Through the tears streaming down your face, you see the mess your psionics created and you know.

You know you killed Aradia.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, but you can’t be bothered to even look at it right now. Too much is weighing on you to do something so trivial.

Hours have passed, and in the distance, the sun begins to rise. The heat and exhaustion is too much for you to handle, even as it is barely visible over the horizon. You succumb to your surroundings, and you see nothing.

You awake in your hive, in your room, with no idea how you got there. Disoriented, you naturally reach for your computer as you often do, but your muscles are tired, your head screams with pain, and you decide you will be sitting in the dark for most of the day.

It only takes a few seconds for you to remember what happened last night, and as you read the messages, your world falls apart all over again.

GC: SOLLUX  
GC: SOLLUX 4R3 YOU H3R3  
GC: TH1S 1S R34LLY 1MPORT4NT  
GC: 1 TH1NK SOM3TH1NG H4PP3N3D TO 4R4D14 B3C4US3 SH3S NOT R3SPOND1NG TO M3  
GC: 4ND SH3 W4S JUST T4LK1NG 4BOUT G3TT1NG VR1SK4 B4CK FOR WH4T SH3 D1D TO T4VROS  
GC: 1TS NOT L1K3 H3R TO NOT R3SPOND >:[  
GC: UGH 4ND NOW YOU 4R3NT R3SPOND1NG!  
GC: LOOK 1 TH1NK SH3S 1N TROUBL3 H3R3  
GC: VR1SK4 1S K1ND OF D4NG3ROUS WH3N 1T COM3S TO R3V3NG3  
GC: BY K1ND OF 1 M34N 4 LOT  
GC: 1 DONT KNOW 1F 4R4D14S DON3 SOM3TH1NG 4LR34DY BUT 1F YOU COULD T4LK TO H3R TH4T WOULD B3 GR34T  
GC: 1 JUST DONT W4NT H3R G3TT1NG HURT  
GC: SH3 WOULDNT L1ST3N TO M3  
GC: 1 H4V3 4 B4D F33L1NG SH3 M1GHT TRY TO DR4G YOU 1NTO TH1S  
GC: VR1SK4 1 M34N  
GC: 1 JUST W4NT YOU TO B3 C4R3FUL  
GC: TRY TO T4LK SOM3 S3NS3 1NTO 44 B3FOR3 SH3 DO3S 4NYTH1NG SH3 R3GR3TS  
GC: 1M GO1NG TO ST4Y ONL1N3 JUST 1N C4S3 YOU G3T B4CK TO M3  
GC: 4NYTH1NG Y3T  
GC: 1 H4V3 4 R34LLY B4D F33L1NG 4BOUT TH1S  
GC: 1TS B33N HOURS  
GC: HOW 4BOUT NOW  
GC: NO? OK  
GC: 1 R3P34T G3T B4CK TO M3 4S4P

You don’t respond. You don’t respond to anyone for a perigee.


	3. Anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by AceyEnn.

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you are furious.  
  
Well, you are _always_ furious, ever since Equius built you the soulbot. It makes it difficult to sustain a matespritship when all you can feel is an uncontrollable amount of rage. You are well-versed in internalization and self-control, but you know that keeping these feelings pent up as you are will only result in your combustion.  
  
At this point, you think it wouldn’t be so bad.  
  
On the meteor, you lose your patience with nearly everyone, and contact is cut short. Equius is one of the only people that even bothers to have a conversation with you. Your body is completely his creation, but he makes you feel in control. He wants something red, but you vacillate black in every moment you are with him. He doesn’t try to fight you, and he could never be your rival. You are in something purely physical in your mind, and in his you are in a committed relationship.  
  
But what is a relationship if you are never on the same page?  
  
You have been concocting a plan of your own, in secret. Your social skills were completely fried beyond repair when Vriska killed you, and to include anyone else just wouldn’t be worth it. You are far too careless, too reckless, and part of you knows that this could go horribly, horribly wrong.  
  
Most of all, you wish you could tell Sollux.  
  
He seems happier lately with Feferi, her infectious laughter and personality bubbling up the entire room. When they are together, you catch him smiling for the first time since you died. You wish you could feel what he feels, you wish you could feel happy for him. You almost wish you could feel jealous, but you don’t. You feel angry. The two of you have experienced awkward and brief conversations where you made plans to talk with him. Caught up with Equius, your resurrection, and the strong sensation to pummel everything in sight with your bare hands, it completely slipped your mind.  
  
Sollux waited for you, but you didn’t show up.  
  
Now, there’s a barricade between you that has been slowly building and growing stronger, one that never used to exist when the two of you were alive. He has stopped looking your way, but you make sure to glance toward him when you can. Equius notices your distraction and becomes self-conscious, but you have no words to assure him. You are heartless in all sense of the word, restricted by the inflammatory nature of your boiling temper.  
  
Out of your extraordinary peripherals, and movement sensory capabilities, you notice that he leaves the room. He walks at a slow enough pace that you could catch up with him, and you start to follow him. Your feet are made of metal, so you levitate to follow him quietly. You barely make it to the hall when you watch him remove his glasses and sigh, using the ends of his shirt to wipe away the dust.  
  
It is then you realize you do not know what words will come out of your mouth. You do not know what you should or need to do. A relationship that had once come so naturally to the two of you has stalled and retreated back to nothing but a bothersome hesitance.  
  
You decide it would be better if you say nothing at all.  
  
And you turn around and go.

-

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you see her turn around.

You knew she was coming after you due to just how finely tuned you are to the sound of machinery. It’s pathetic even to you, but at least you know when to expect her now. You stopped for her, so you could meet her half-way, but you can’t look at her like this. She can’t look at you either, but you manage to steal glances every now and then because she seems to be a fucking grey blob ever present in your peripherals.

You feel stupid for even coming out here in the first place, habitually wiping your glasses although they don’t even need to be cleaned.

You’re pissed at her for all the shit she has managed to pull. The time she spends with that repulsive highblood – ugh, you do NOT want to picture them snogging – makes you feel a need to hurl into the nearest waste bin. She used to clench her fists in frustration at Equius and his rampant casteism, and now she was dating him? Not to mention that the two of you were supposed to talk, but she didn’t show up. She just left you in the common room, waiting by yourself for at least an hour.

Every part of you wants to be angry at her and leave it at that. Unfortunately, Aradia isn’t Aradia anymore, and it isn’t her fault.

It’s yours.

Aradia told you it wasn’t your fault back when she was only a ghost, haunting your ass through Trollian. Feferi tries to convince you that you had no part in it. But you saw everything as your eyes incinerated her entire being, and you felt the psionic charge flow through your veins and your brain as you lost all control.

You hate thinking about it, but you can’t stop thinking about it, and the worst part is that you can’t talk about it. When Feferi peeks her head out of the hallway and gives you a toothy grin, you meet her gaze with a half-assed smile. She asks you what you’re doing by yourself and calls you silly.

You tell her you have no fucking idea.

 


	4. Denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by sparklezpotatoes, written by AceyEnn.

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you can’t get used to this.  
  
It’s so _weird_ , being a ghost. You feel only frustration--frustration at not being able to communicate, at not being able to touch anything, at not being able to _feel_. There’s the occasional echo of your past emotions, yes, but nothing significant.  
  
And yet despite your emotionless state, you feel compelled to stay with Sollux. He can’t see you. He can’t feel your touch or hear your voice. Realistically, there is no reason for you to be spending all your time at his hive.  
  
You do anyway.  
  
There’s a part of you somewhere that wants to see him smile again, or at least not beat himself up so much over your death. From a purely logical perspective, he was never at fault, and it just frustrates you more that he can’t fucking understand that.  
  
Nevertheless, you spend the better part of the next perigee haunting his hive. Sometimes you’ll try to shake things up a bit, moving objects and trying to get his attention; most of the time you just watch him going through what now passes for his daily life.  
  
If you still had lungs, you think you’d probably scream.  
  
It’s a perigee or so before you figure out how to operate your computer using telekinesis, but the moment you do, an idea hits you. You’re still here, you still have a Trollian account...what harm could it do?  
  
AA: hell0 s0llux  
  
You wait.

-

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you feel absolutely empty.

It’s not just that Aradia is gone. You wish it was just that. You’re sure you could, eventually, find a way to move on. It’s the fact--the absolute, immutable fact--that she’d still be alive if you were less of a weakling.

For a good perigee, you don’t leave your hive. Shit, you barely leave your ‘coon. What’s the point? You’d just see things that remind you of her, of what happened.

There’s a worthless part of your brain that sees things moving at the edge of your peripheral vision every once in a while, and that causes you to light up just a little. It fills you with this disgusting sense of _hope_. You’re sure that hope would be a fine thing if it weren’t for your knowledge that it’s not _her_ moving. Grief does crazy things to people’s minds.

You find yourself screaming sometimes. Not at anyone or anything in particular, just screaming in general. You _know_ you’ll never get used to being without her.

One day, your computer chimes. Actually, it’s been chiming a lot lately, but you haven’t bothered to check on it. You’re not sure what possesses you to check it this time, but you immediately feel a pang in your stomach the moment you open it up.

AA: hell0 s0llux   
AA: i h0pe this is w0rking   
AA: if n0t i supp0se thats 0k   
AA: i just wanted y0u t0 kn0w that im still here   
AA: its weird   
AA: i d0nt feel much anym0re   
AA: but i d0 feel like leaving y0u al0ne w0uld be a bad idea   
AA: s0   
AA: here i am   
TA: ha, real fuckiing funny.   
TA: who ii2 thii2, anyway? ii2 iit vrii2ka?   
AA: s0llux its me   
AA: its aradia   
AA: its aa   
TA: youre really commiitted two thii2 whole charade, a22hole.   
TA: pretendiing two be my dead friiend? iit2 liike youre ju2t rubbiing everythiing in my face.   
TA: whiich ii2 ju2t liike you, VRII2KA.   
TA: 2o fuck off.   
TA: iim not iin the mood for your b2 twoniight.

**-twinArmageddons [TA] has blocked apocalypseArisen [AA]-**


	5. Treasured Memories

Your name is Aradia Megido, and tonight, your best friend is staying at your hive.

It’s been a long time coming from when the two of you met online sweeps ago, and it has been your job to make sure that everything goes perfectly. In preparation, you have spent at least a few weeks scheduling out everything you want him to see before he has to go back home. Visits from him are few and far between, and it is of utmost importance that you both make the most of his time here. He hasn’t told you much of what he wants to do beyond an “ii dont know.”

Now, he’s arrived, sending you messages from one of his many portable devices to let you know that he is almost there.

In anticipation, you run outside, making sure that you are the first one to greet him. Of course, there’s no chance of anyone else beating you to it this far away from the city, but you figure a cholerbear could come out of nowhere and scare him away.

You see a shape flying in the distance and approaching your hive at a quick pace. Squinting into the horizon, it would be impossible to not recognize him. Sollux, your best friend, your potential matesprit, has made the trek from the city to see you. You smile as you watch him approach, excited nerves fluttering like butterflies in your stomach as he drops himself to the ground.

“A perfect two for that entrance,” you say with a grin, reaching out to hug him tightly.

“Wow, a perfect two. Just what I always wanted."

His voice is dripping with sarcasm, but his arms slip around you easily.  
He hesitantly wraps his arms around you before you break away to grab his hand and pull him inside your hive. The stairs twist upwards in a way you thought was entirely awesome when you designed it, back when you were a wriggler. To this day, you find yourself climbing them just for fun, even if you don’t have to. Sollux tries to cheat, and you tell him that he’s losing out on the experience.

The moment you enter your room, your lusus greets Sollux by nudging his shoulder with her horns, to which he gives the most displeased expression you have ever seen. Maybe it’s because you know him so well, but you find the look on his face cute. If you told him that, he would most likely argue you to death. For now, you will keep your thoughts to yourself. There’s a small change in the corner of his mouth as it shifts slightly upward into a crooked half-smile.

“She missed you,” you say, knowing this to be true. Last time Sollux paid you a visit, you caught him using her as a pillow when he accidentally fell asleep. He denied that it was intentional, but she seemed to enjoy every minute of it.

“Yeah, well, consider me to be absolutely miss-able.”

His lisp makes you smile, and it’s another aspect you like about him. Sure, it’s something Karkat gives him shit about on a daily basis, but it happens to be part of what makes Sollux, well, Sollux.

Rammom is not the only one that missed him.

You remove neatly placed papers on your desk and hold them up. These papers serve as your meticulously planned schedule for the next twenty-four hours. He eyes you suspiciously, as if what you are holding is actually a diabolical plan for his demise.

“Why are you giving me that look?” you say with a laugh. “I planned out some things for us to do, since you won’t be here that long. I thought we could start with the cool stuff, because I have to show you the coolest ruins I’ve found so far! And then we can walk to the forest and spy on some neat beasts--”

“AA,” he says, and you abruptly stop talking. He smiles at you, and it’s a smile that makes the heat rise to your cheeks for an inexplicable reason. “Breaking news, we don’t have to plan this whole thing out. Plus, I could die in your ruins anyway since I’m nowhere near your level of adventurous.”

“You can cheat!”

“If by cheating you mean flying, then I guess so.”

You almost respond, but something catches your eye. The color fades from your cheeks, and you smile in the direction of your door.

“Well, looks like we’ll have a delay regardless.”

Rammom has chosen to curl up in front of your door, face buried in her own tail. For any other individual with a fairly small sized-lusus, this would not be an obstacle. After all, she is sleeping on the floor. It would be so simple to step or float over her, one would think.

Wrong. Last time Sollux tried to pull that, he received a roundhouse kick to the face.

You laugh and toss the schedule aside. It was a dumb idea anyway.

-

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you can’t leave Aradia’s respiteblock even if you want to.

In all honesty, the journey to her hive is a tiring one, and you are relieved that there’s a reason to not spend more time outside.

You’re done with being outside.

Aradia has long since ditched her efforts to salvage the weekend through obsessive planning. With her lusus blocking the way out, she has no choice but to relax. Calming her down isn’t much of your thing, so it’s best to let her come to her own conclusions. After she tosses the schedule in the bin, she sits next to you on the floor, eyes glued to her lusus.

“You sure you don’t want to pick her up again?” she says, and you know she’s teasing by the way she giggles.

Her laugh has always been contagious, and it makes something within you want to chuckle like an idiot. Sometimes you find yourself doing just that, back in your hive when you’re messaging back and forth over Trollian. Something about her makes her completely unforgettable.

You have no idea why she likes spending time with you so much.

“I’ll pass,” you tell her with a snort as the two of you watch the ram-kangaroo hybrid sleep peacefully.

She pulls her knees up to her chest, tall white socks in full display as her skirt shifts. You listen to her breathe.

“What do you want to do, now, then?” she asks you, and you roll your eyes at the question.

It’s a simple answer.

“Obviously, I want to be in a room by myself, surrounded by cluckbeasts because that’s what I came here for. I want to hang out with you, genius.”

She tells you to shut up because she knows that already, and you can’t stop smiling. Rammom stays in front of the door for the rest of the night, which leaves the two of you talking and laughing and poking fun at each other in the most loving of ways. Everything falls back into place when you’re around her, and despite your constantly shifting moods, she never fails to give you a piece of genuine happiness that is near impossible to find on your own.

At some point of the night, you make some kind of stupid pun having to do with a ram that makes no sense at all, but she finds it hilarious and laughs for a solid three minutes.

You try to tell her it’s not that funny, but your words only cause her giggle fit to extend once it starts to die down. When she finally calms down, she meets your gaze and you realize you have what must be the most stupid grin on your face. Her face is turning a burgundy color, and yours is turning a much less flattering yellow.

You get the idea to kiss her in your head, and the silence between you is potent with chemistry much too think to ignore. But you chicken out, because you have so many reasons why this won’t work. You’re too young for this, you couldn’t possibly secure a matespritship with Aradia, and then you could also make a complete fool of yourself and ruin what you already have, which should be good enough--

And she interrupts your thoughts with a kiss to your cheek that makes your head reel before she stands up and acts like that hadn’t just happened between the two of you.

Aradia starts rambling about her collection of creepy dead things she’s found in various ruins, but you can’t hear a word she’s saying. She won’t look at you, but from this angle you can see that her cheeks are still a dark red, and it makes you feel less shitty about the whole thing.

By the time she finally sits back down, Rammom hasn’t moved an inch, and you still can’t stop thinking about her lips on your cheek.

Your conversation manages to continue like nothing happened, and it’s how you prefer it. She stops talking suddenly, and you feel a weight on your shoulder.

Aradia’s fast asleep and using you as a pillow, and you consider yourself selfish because you don’t move her into her recuperacoon for at least a couple of hours.


	6. Confrontation

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you feel sick watching him stand up and start to walk away on his own again.

“Sollux, wait.”

He grumbles under his breath as you follow after him, wiping your cheeks of the tears you didn’t notice had slipped from your eyes. Your voice cracks when he keeps walking.

“Sollux, please.”

He’s walking away from the last bubble you watched together, and while you know it’s a treasured memory for the both of you, it tends to hurt more than it does heal. Watching the two of you struggle resurfaces emotions that neither of you have dealt with. It was easy to try and pick up where you left off when you resurrected, but you can’t deny the existence of a rift between the two of you.

“I didn’t sign up for this, fucking hell,” he says, exasperated, and he sniffs.

“It’s important for us to see--”

Sollux whirls around, almost falling as he does so, but he steadies himself. He isn’t looking in your direction, but you can still see the yellow tear stains on his face.

“You keep saying that! It’s important, we have to embrace the past, well, you know what? I already went through that once, and I’m not watching it to reminisce or any kind of bullshit like that. You can stay here all you want. I’m out.” 

-

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you didn’t mean a word of what you just said. You actually have no intention of leaving her by herself with this plethora of unpleasant memories. Although you can’t see her face, or anything at all unless you’re immersed in a memory of your own, the silence gives you a perfectly clear picture of her expression.

You sigh, exhausted with yourself and the events that have transpired at an incredible speed. You feel guilty, but that’s nothing new. It’s been sustaining itself on your self-hatred and growing as time passes despite the fact that everything is supposed to be all right. You clench your fists at the thought of your own lack of control. You should have been able to fight Vriska off of your mind so long ago. You should have been able to see it coming. This train of thought almost feels useless, but the bitterness you hold against yourself feels all the more relevant as you watch each memory pass before you.

You take a deep breath as nothing more is said, and you decide to break the fragile quiet around you.

“I can’t forgive myself for doing this to you,” you tell her, your voice faltering despite how slow you’re speaking. “For doing this to us.”

You hear her sniffle as the tears well up in your eyes again. You hate crying. You hate it when she cries. This is not something that both of you do, especially not in the company of others. But then again, Aradia isn’t just some troll to you.

“But you didn’t,” she says, and you can hear shoes in the grass as she takes a couple of steps toward you.

“Of course you’re going to say that,” you say, not meaning to sound as bitter as you do, an overwhelmed sigh escaping your lips as you try to find the words you want to say, the words you need to say, and the words you are actually going to end up saying.

It’s like she used to say, it’s all inevitable, anyway.

You continue.

“But you don’t get it. You don’t get that I could feel every bit of myself that hurt you. I could feel the way my psionics charged inside of me when you looked up at me with that smile, I could feel the desire she had to hurt you. For a few seconds, I actually- I wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to do that again. If she could take me over so easily, how can I make sure nothing like that happens again? There’s an infinite amount of her running around, and I’m weak, I’m so weak--“

“Sollux,” she says, her voice soft but firm. “Stop it.”

“I can’t stop it, AA, it’s how it is--“

“Listen!”

Her voice raises, and you abruptly stop talking, the weight on your chest growing stronger by the second.

“I pushed her too far because of my obsession with revenge. You’re forgetting that I had a hand in sending her over the edge.” There’s a silence again, but you don’t respond. “And she did everything, none of it was you. Even if it felt that way, she’s good like that. Or bad, very bad like that.”

“It doesn’t change what happened, that we could never be like how we were before again. We didn’t give a fuck about anything back then. We were so ignorant to all of the shit around us.”

“I think we can get it back.”

Honestly, you have no idea how you would even start to get back to where you were in the memory you just watched. You were two wrigglers, living in bliss at what you didn’t know. It was just the two of you, and nothing else mattered. Now, with everything that had happened, the world you shared with Aradia had been destroyed beyond repair. The little pieces of happiness combined with the shield of being completely unaware was the only thing that kept what you had with one another safe, even among the voices of the doomed that plagued your minds.

“And how are we supposed to do that, Miss Optimistic?”

“Because I still feel the same about you that I did back then.”

Her words make your pusher freeze in place, and your mouth runs without having a chance to let your mind work its own shit out.

“That’s really stupid.”

She exhales so loudly that you can picture her tired expression, and it almost makes you smile regardless of how inappropriate it would be to do so in this situation.

Then again, Aradia is the queen of smiling at inopportune moments.

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“What do you want me to do, say ‘yeah, I feel totes pale for you. Let’s skip into the blazing sunset together holding hands?’”

You can practically feel the weight of the pointed glare in your direction.

“You know it’s not pale.”

She’s right. It’s not pale, and it’s never felt pale. In actuality, the two of you have proved to be decently terrible at calming each other down, balancing each other out, and feeling platonically in regards to one another.

Now that you really think about it, the two of you would make for a humiliating pair of moirails.

“Why would you want me as a matesprit, anyway? I can’t see shit, I can’t walk around by myself or I end up eating dirt, seriously, AA, the list is endless.”

“I can give you one good reason,” she says in a tone that gives away her smile.

“Why do I feel like this is going to be some kind of a morbid pun?”

“Shut up. You’re going to ruin it.”

“Fine. What’s the reason?”

“Because you make me feel twice as alive.”

You can’t resist. “All the time?”

“All the time.”

“I guess we’re doomed.”

She bursts into a fit of giggles, and it’s impossible not to smile at her – or at least, it’s impossible not to smile in the direction you can only assume she is currently in. It takes her a while to calm down, but when she does, there’s a fluttering in your chest that feels so disgustingly cliché, but for her, it’s worth it.

“Well, you make me feel twice as alive, too. Or fully alive. You know what? Fuck it, whatever.” You blindly reach your hand out to possibly grab her hand or something even slightly romantic. “Where the hell are you?”

She grabs your hand first and places it on her cheek, and you doesn’t realize how close she actually is until you feel her lips on yours.

It’s been a long time coming.

When you kiss her, it makes you feel stupid and incredibly dumb and amazing at the same time. Her lips are softer than you could have ever imagined, and her touch gentle. You have imagined this scene in your head at different times in the past, and it’s never gone as quite as smoothly as this. You almost convinced yourself that she would be much too assertive in a red quadrant, and therefore too much for you to handle. But who were you kidding? She knows you. She knows you so goddamn well.

It’s not long before she pulls away, and you’re still stuck leaning forward because you don’t know what she plans on doing, and her kiss is excellent.

“I think this is one we’ll want to see,” she says, as you feel the bubble shift in the way it does under your feet, just slightly but enough to disorient you all over again. “Open your eyes.”

And you do.


	7. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by dreamwidth user abstractflow.

 

Your name is Aradia Megido, and you are very much alive.  
  
Sollux has followed you out of the memories of your friends with a skill that only he possesses. You speak as if you’ve never been apart, and he’s half-blind and staring at the green sun in the distance. You are filled with excitement to see him, a sense of happiness so strong that you have not felt in quite some time now. You felt happy before, but now words cannot touch how elated you feel.  
  
You could say that you feel twice as alive with him around, but it’s not like you would ever tell him that.  
  
He’s intrigued with the idea of seeing the Green Sun in 2-D, because now he is somehow half-blind. This is one of two of him – go figure - that are currently living. You know that this one won’t be for long, but his memories here will be retained by the one that succeeds him. He is relatively calm, perhaps more at peace with anything than you have ever seen him. Even as a time player, this continues to be a tedious concept to explain.  
  
Every moment here is just as real as it would be if you chose to visit the meteor first.  
  
“So, is this actually you?” His voice is calm, and something tells you that this scene would go much different if he wasn’t so incredibly tranquil for one reason or another.  
  
“In the flesh,” you say with a sense of pride and accomplishment, and he looks over at you. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s not hit with a plethora of emotions, considering you have a job to do.  
  
You wonder whether you should be concerned or relieved at his lack of reaction. Unlike your former state, he does not appear to be indifferent. Instead, it seems as if he is simply balanced. He is not angry, upset, or apathetic. He is the very definition of just fine, and he is with you again.  
  
You know he has questions, but something tells you that you both already know now is not the time for answers or exposition.  
  
“You look happy,” he says, his voice low and lisp gone as he turns to look at you.  
  
His eyes have changed: one black and one white. At least he can see you.  
  
This is the first time the two of you have comfortably and genuinely met each other’s gaze since your death. Even with the universe about to fall apart all around you, the dynamic you share with him is the only working piece left of the world around you.  
  
“I am,” you say, smile widening as your wings flutter behind you. “I really am.”  
  
He looks at you expectantly, in a fashion that would normally be replaced with a suspicious disbelief. He is quiet and calculating, but before you realize it, you are already embracing him as tight as your arms will allow you without completely crushing his skinny bone structure. Luckily, there is no metal to separate your soul from his. There is no bitterness, or disappointment, or acrid taste of a goodbye in the air.  
  
It is just the two of you, and that is all you need. You have him back now.  
  
Before, when you were without the pleasure of living, you spoke of everything around you being OK. Your definition of the word has changed monumentally from acceptance of the inevitable into the potential for happiness never ceasing to exist.  
  
But for once, the two of you are truly OK.  
 

-

 

 

  
Your name is Sollux Captor, and you harbor no ill feelings toward her.  
  
The moment your arms slide around her to hold her firmly against your chest, you know. You know the minute you bury your face into her shoulder, and although you feel the most at peace that you have ever been, your eyes well up with tears. You don’t feel like you’re crying, but you are, and with the tension easing out of your shoulders, you melt into her, and you will never let go.  
  
“I missed you,” you say quietly, stated like the fact that it is. You don’t miss her anymore, because every part of her is intact even more than it was before.  
  
“I missed you, too,” she says with a giggle that sounds foreign due to how long it has been since you actually heard her laugh.  
  
You think her outfit is incredibly ridiculous, but that’s the least of your worries. Besides, it’s Aradia, and she can make something like that actually work.  
  
“You’re a fucking fairy,” you say, and she keeps laughing. You don’t want her to stop.  
  
She pulls you in tighter when you don’t even think it’s possible, and she laughs again.  
  
“And you’re still a nerd.”  
  
Even in your current state, you still manage to make a crooked smile.  
  
For the first time, you know everything is going to be OK.

 


End file.
